This disclosure relates generally to presenting content to users of an online system, and more specifically to generating a feed of content for presentation to a user of the online system.
Online systems, such as social networking systems, allow users to connect to and to communicate with other users of the online system. Users may create profiles on an online system that are tied to their identities and include information about the users, such as interests and demographic information. The users may be individuals or entities such as corporations or charities. Online systems allow users to easily communicate and to share content with other online system users by providing content to an online system for presentation to other users. Content provided to an online system by a user may be declarative information provided by a user, status updates, check-ins to locations, images, photographs, videos, text data, or any other information a user wishes to share with additional users of the online system. An online system may also generate content for presentation to a user, such as content describing actions taken by other users on the online system.
Additionally, many online systems commonly allow publishing users (e.g., businesses) to sponsor presentation of content on an online system to gain public attention for a user's products or services or to persuade other users to take an action regarding the publishing user's products or services. Content for which the online system receives compensation in exchange for presenting to users is referred to as “sponsored content.” Many online systems receive compensation from a publishing user for presenting online system users with certain types of sponsored content provided by the publishing user. Frequently, online systems charge a publishing user for each presentation of sponsored content to an online system user or for each interaction with sponsored content by an online system user. For example, an online system receives compensation from a publishing user each time a content item provided by the publishing user is displayed to another user on the online system or each time another user is presented with a content item on the online system and interacts with the content item (e.g., selects a link included in the content item), or each time another user performs another action after being presented with the content item.
Many online systems present sponsored content together with organic content, which is content for which the online system does not receive compensation for presenting. However, presenting sponsored content and organic content together divides a user's attention between the sponsored content and the organic content, which may decrease user interaction with organic content, causing a decrease in overall user interaction with the online system. An online system may offset presentation of sponsored content items to users along with organic content by accounting for a user's likelihood of interacting with sponsored content and organic content based on a position in a feed of content in which the sponsored content or the organic content is presented. While accounting for positions in a feed of content in which organic content or sponsored content is presented allows an online system to increase user interaction with the organic content and the sponsored content, accounting for positions of organic content and sponsored content in a feed of content may reduce an amount of time for an online system to generate the feed of content, impairing the quality of the content included in the feed or may increase a latency for the online system to provide the feed of content to a user.